What To Do in the Virgin Islands When.....Part II House Guests

You are waiting for your business license.

As you know a week ago we had our first house guests, Larry the Water Guy and Teresa from Reno, NV. Larry is my well and pump person for selling rural property. They flew on the dreaded flight from Reno, one which Shannon and I have experienced all too well. Reno to LAX at 7 PM, 11 PM red eye to MIA, 10 AM to STT arriving at 12:30 PM. They arrived on Sunday, but as we experienced were too tired to do much and just stayed at their timeshare.

Monday morning they arrived at the house, and after a quick tour it was off to the dock for a day of snorkeling off of St John. A quick stop at Marina Market for our favorite subs and off we went. The beauty of St John is 2/3 of the island is part of the US National Park System, and to prevent damage to the coral, they have mooring balls all over the place, so much easier than anchoring. Whistling Cay was our first stop, and Teresa is not a swimmer so the three of us snorkeled while Teresa worked on her tan (burn). Then after having lunch, off to Water Lemon Cay, a really nice shallow water snorkel around a little island. With a little encouragement and some help, we had Teresa in her snorkel gear.





Teresa was a great sport and really liked looking underwater for the first time at all there is to see! We are hoping this Summer she finds her way to a Red Cross swimming program so next time she can really enjoy all there is to do and see here!

Happy Hour on the boat and back to the dock for our next adventure!




Tuesday - Off to Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands for a day at White Bay and Soggy Dollar Bar! We made it through customs and were parked off of the beach by 10AM. After helping a boat from Puerto Rico get anchored correctly (they bought me a painkiller later that day!), we did the usual White Bay routine with breakfast of Bloody Mary's, Lunch at Jewels, and afternoon drinks at Soggy Dollar (both Larry and I were not successful at the tree ring toss). I have become more prepared and made a crock pot of turkey chili prior to our departure!








Larry with Heat Miser Hair!


Wed. was the day for installing the reverse osmosis system, followed by a swim at Megan's Bay and dinner at Latitude 18.




Thursday was our big fishing day. We chartered Captain Tyler of Double Header. This guy is a fishing fanatic and if you ever want to go fishing here, he is the guy to go with if you want to catch fish. In our case we caught fish, along with sharks, big ones! We left at 1PM with a stop at Mandahl Pond for bait fish and off to the North Drop where we trolled. 15 mins later we had a small mackerel on board. Then a small blue fin tuna, followed by a stray peanut Mahi (Mahi season here is about over but I guess it was not a banner season down here, at the Mahi Tournament, the biggest was 15 lbs, a joke!).




Then there was nothing, until we ran into a school of tuna. They were big and jumping out of the water! Larry had a big one on, he reeled and reeled as hard as he could, but.....




Larry almost beat the shark, but hell, tuna is tuna right, even if it has to be shared with sharks? Well unfortunately, that was the case the rest of the afternoon other than a couple of Bonita, as soon as we had a tuna on, you would be reeling and all of a sudden it really got heavy like you had a ton of cement on the line. These sharks are Silky sharks and the ones we had circling the boat were about 4-5 feet and 100-200 lbs. Good news is we were 5 miles out and these sharks do not come anywhere near shore (there has not been a recorded shark attack in the Virgin Islands).




One of the weird things about charter fishing down here is you only get to keep 20 lbs of the catch, the captain sells the rest to restaurants. That is fine if you are here for a few days and have to get on a plane, but for a local, I wouldn't mind filling my freezer with fresh fish? It is what it is, I guess on the bright side, the captain is motivated to catch as many fish as he can? In our case we had grilled seared tuna and mahi on the grill for the next two nights and Shannon and I made tuna long roll sushi on Saturday night! The vacuum packer came out and we have 12 packs of 2 fillets in our freezer!



Friday was spent getting our pool pump lines in order (our next blog post will be the pool) and a farewell swim at Megan's Bay. Larry and Teresa were going to check out of their timeshare on Saturday morning and catch their 1 PM flight. It is warm here at night 78 for a low with 60 % humidity, and there were 3 fans going in the apartment bedroom, but our power company, WAPA had some issues, the power went out at 5:30 AM. I awoke around 6 AM and there was Larry in his rental car with the A/C on and Teresa scrambling to pack up. Larry had had it, he was dripping in sweat not to mention he had some sun burn, they were off to the timeshare that has a generator and central air! Please keep in mind that Reno has an average humidity of about 15-40% humidity and there are studies done that show the human body takes 2-3 weeks to acclimate to our tropical weather here.

Thanks Larry and Teresa for all the fun, and thanks Larry for all the hard work on our house, can't wait for you to come down again soon!

Owning a Home in St Thomas, USVI - Repairs - Part II - Drinking Water

Here in the Virgin Islands, most homes that are not in populated areas are on rain cisterns for water for the home. Most of the homes have a metal roof or a roof that is coated with top coat, the same paint on plastic that is found on RV roofs. From there, the rain water goes into gutters and downspouts into a holding tank, generally a section of the home's foundation contains this tank. There it is pumped from a water pump and small pressure tank to the home's plumbing. The bad news about this system is that all kinds of debris from trees, dust, critters, etc, gets into the tank which for drinking water is not good due to the chance for bacteria, choloform and girardia. There was a study done here in the Virgin Islands by the University of Florida that showed that 54% of the cisterns had giradia. If you have ever had girardia, it is not a pleasant experience. So as one can figure out, you shouldn't be driking your cistern water.




Above is how our home is set up, with the top coat roof, gutters, downspouts, water pump/tank and cistern hatch. Notice we have an all house sediment filter, but that does not kill and sanitize the bacteria.


The issue of safe drinking water causes a dilema, and the best solution is to purchase bottled water from the grocery store. Plaza Extra sells a 24 case of 500 ML bottled water for 3 cases for $12. They also have gallon bottled water for a 6 pack at $6.09. This can be costly as you are supposed to drink one or two gallons a day, not to mention hauling from the store to the car and then up the stairs and the waste of the plastic bottles, especially for here where there is no recycling and the landfill is full.



Well I saw a friend on Facebook who posted his solution to this. A reverese osmosis system with a U/V light. Yes folks, take a look at any of your bottled water like Niagara or Kirkland and see that it is Filtration, Ozone (sanitizer), and reverse osmosis technologies from Ontario, CA. I don't know about you, but I wasn't aware of a giant spring in Ontario, a suburb of Los Angeles! It is city water put the same R/O system you can buy for your home.

Scott, my friend, got his from www.freedrinkingwater.com, and had it shipped here via US Mail.

My brain started thinking, we have our first guests coming, Larry, who owns ASAP Well & Pump in Reno, NV (Otherwise known as Larry the Water Guy!). So I ordered the system with the assist pump as we have pressure below 50 PSI and the UV light. The cost came to about $575 with shipping. This is pretty good payoff of about a year with figuring there is two of us drinking one gallon a day at $1.03 a gallon over 52 weeks, my system will pay for itself in a little less than a year. Yes the costs of electric running the U/V light and water pump, and replacing the filters and light once a year, but to not have to haul water anymore, PRICELESS!

It took Larry about a half day to install this, with a trip to Home Depot as we have some funky plumbing here, but we now have FREE bottled water from our cistern!




We call our new bottled water, "Virgin Larry Water". The logo is in the works!

What To Do In The Virgin Islands When....Part I

You are waiting for your real estate Broker's License.

When we moved all of our belongings down here a month ago, I made it a priority to submit my broker's license application. Three weeks later I received a letter that I had been approved to sit for the Broker Examination. Only problem with that is there was a dispute with the RE Commission and the testing company over the cost to the territory. The RE Commission has been looking for a new testing company, but we all know that means, "Island Time".

So what better way to spend our time, enjoying all that is here to enjoy! I haven't posted in a while as we had been getting unpacked and our house ready for our first guests from Reno, NV, Larry and Teresa.  Well we did do some sneaking away from domestic duties in preparation too. Larry was my Well & Pump specialist when I worked in Reno.

One of our favorite things to do was to go to Water Island's Honeymoon Beach on a Sunday afternoon for a Heidi Burger and Joe's Rum Shack.

Water Island is seperate from the main island of St Thomas and there is no bridge, just a water taxi. So many of the islands inhabitants drive golf carts. Well Heidi's is no exception, she has her portable hamburger stand!

 

The burgers are delicious and huge all for a decent price. When you come by boat you just park outside the swim area in front of Joe's, which has live music and sometimes a late afternoon pot luck!

As you know we have two Labrador retrievers, and they, you guessed it, love the water. So we found this beach called Vessup which is by a nice restaurant in Red Hook called Latitude 18. With a little help from Google Maps we found a road to this beach where we can drive our Toyota Tacoma on the beach with the dogs, which is perfect! Put the tailgate down and viola, a beach chair!

Of course we have been doing grocery shopping, and I will save the whole shopping experience for another post. But I had to throw this picture in for humor!

One of our all time favorite weekend excursions is to go over to the British Virgin Islands to Jost Van Dyke and visit White Beach, home of the Soggy Dollar Bar. This little island is about 8 miles away and from our porch we look out at this tropical paradise. From the photo below it is the island on the horizon toward the left.

We have been over here in the past and had the nice opportunity to go out on a friends boat!

When you get to JVD you have to check into customs in another harbor called Great Harbor at the police station. There you will fill out customs paperwork, pay your $15-$45 fee for the boat depending on the day and have your passport stamped? Yes, this is another country believe it or not!

Once that is accomplished it is off to one of the most beautiful beaches, White Bay. Soggy Dollar Bar gets its name for the reason that there is no dock in this bay and all the boaters have to swim to the bar. It is known for its rum drink, "Painkiller", which is dark rum 1/3 of the cup, pineapple juice, orange juice, creme de coconut. We started off with breakfast, otherwise known as a Bloody Mary.

Lunch is at Jewel's Snack Shack! She has the best burger on the island and is right down the beach from Soggy Dollar Bar. Jewel is originally from NYC, and has been living on JVD for about 11 years.

And of course the rest of the afternoon consists of a drink, swim, drink, swim, noted so much I put the sticker on our boat.

Then it is time to go back home and get the house ready for guests!